Does Bells Inequality Principle rule out local theories of quantum mechanics?
In 1935 Albert Einstein and two colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR) developed a thought experiment to demonstrate what they felt was a lack of completeness in quantum mechanics. This so-called “EPR paradox” has led to much subsequent, and still on-going, research. This article is an introduction to EPR, Bell’s inequality, and the real experiments which have attempted to address the interesting issues raised by this discussion. One of the principal features of quantum mechanics is that not all the classical physical observables of a system can be simultaneously known with unlimited precision, even in principle. Instead, there may be several sets of observables which give qualitatively different, but nonetheless complete (maximal possible) descriptions of a quantum mechanical system. These sets are sets of “good quantum numbers,” and are also known as “maximal sets of commuting observables.” Observables from different sets are “noncommuting observables”. A well known exampl
Related Questions
- Why were two theories (Matrix Mechanics and Wave Mechanics) deemed logically distinct, and yet equivalent, in Quantum Mechanics?.
- What might be an example of the use of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principles use outside of quantum mechanics?
- Does Bells Inequality rule out local theories of quantum mechanics?
